Sun-dried tomato and goat cheese panini with a Pilsner Urquell ($8, but never mind.)

I only have pictures of all of my meals because Husband was at home, and I thought he might look at this as a way of our sharing the trip. You’d have to ask him if he agrees, or if he thought I was just being really annoying.

Some other interesting sites:

Rockefeller Center

This looks so much bigger on TV.

St. Mark’s (?) Cathedral

I really should keep track of the identities of these things. Stunning, though, isn't it?

Columbus Circle

Does this coat make my butt look big?

Times Square

I would have taken pictures on our pedicab tour of Central Park but I was too busy hanging on for dear life. This is also why you don’t get a picture of the chocolate almond croissant I got from the Bouchon Bakery. It was, for lack of a better word, amazing. Probably a thousand calories. But worth every single one of them.

I also don’t have pictures of Murray Perahia in concert. They kind of frown on that, although it didn’t seem to be stopping someone on the other side of the hall. I’m sitting in the back of Avery Fisher Hall, with ~ 2,500 people between him and me, and he plays Bach with such a beautiful, delicate, intimate yet singing tone it’s like he’s sitting right next to me. And then oh, how the Chopin roared! I was there with at least a dozen of my music-camp-faculty colleagues, and we were joking that we were going to have T-shirts made to wear at camp this summer that say “Just play it like Murray plays it.” As if.

It was also nice to see a full house, and again the next night for the Interlochen Academy’s anniversary celebration concert. Maybe it’s NOT the end of Classical music after all.

I loved the city. Anything you want to eat, do, see, buy, they have, and probably in the same block on which you find yourself. It was cleaner and safer than I imagined, although there was one poor soul on the subway that I can’t stop thinking about. As my friend Liza, who lives on the upper tip of Manhattan, says, you can’t help everyone. But I do think maybe we should try harder to help more.

And I don’t think I would be very happy about having to drive there, although I might be able to convince myself that I could find that perfect balance between assertive and defensive driving. I certainly wouldn’t bother with wanting a nice car; maybe something pre-dented.

I wrote the poem in the previous post on the plane on the way back after almost a two hour delay while we waited for the mechanics to make repairs. I’m always happy to have people fix things wrong with the plane that I’m supposed to be flying in; not like the pilot can hear a funny noise and decide to pull over onto the shoulder and call AAA. I would however always, selfishly, rather it was someone else’s plane that needed repair. I didn’t really understand the surly young man behind me — would he have rather they had flown without rear pitch control (whateverthatmeans)? And it did make my night’s sleep rather short by the time I got home. I was extremely grateful not to be seated next to the girl who had plopped herself down next to me in the terminal (despite the other 85 empty seats at the gate) and then regaled her father via cellphone with her tales of woe, including an apology for being so drunk last time she called him — apparently her brother had carried her out of the bar after she passed out and she didn’t even realize she had made any phone calls until the next morning. Charming. On so many levels. Not helped by the fact that some other people seemed to think she was with me. Apparently my sympathy only extends so far.

And despite popular opinion, most of the New Yorkers were exceedingly friendly, except for the waitstaff at the Pazza Notte on 6th. We weren’t getting dinner, just drinks and an appetizer, so, despite the fact that it was 10:30 p.m.and there were at least ten empty tables in the restaurant, we were escorted to two uncomfortable chairs and a barrel (I’mnotmakingthisup) in a stinky corner by the kitchen to drink our watered-down cosmopolitans and eat our not-really-all-the-convincing bruschetta. Quite a contrast to the ramen place, where every. single. employee. thanked us as we left.